Duesy

Making dues and fees easy in youth sports.

Founder + CEO

Tony Caudill, LLC

In addition to building my own companies, I partner with a small handful of B2B SaaS + payments companies with $0-$10M in ARR.

- Fractional CXO (e.g. CMO, CRO, COO, etc.)
- Board Advisor / Member
- Payments GTM

I build and advise B2B SaaS + payments companies.

Nelnet

Bringing new products and services to market.

Director - New Ventures

aware3

I led aware3 from concept in 2013, through a $1M seed round, to acquisition by Nelnet (NYSE: NNI) in 2018.

Co-founder & CEO (acquired by NYSE: NNI)

Comcast Cable

Executive Director of Wireless

Accenture

My 12+ years at Accenture were spent helping wireless and cable companies build and launch innovative mobile-led products and services. I worked with US and international clients including Comcast, AT&T/Cingular, Microsoft, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, Disney Mobile, T-Mobile USA, SK Telecom, Pivot (Sprint + MSO JV), and more.

Senior Manager

I build online products that help organizations grow and engage their community in real life.

My first company @aware3, helped ~6,000 churches, schools, and nonprofits process $600M+ in online donations. It was acquired by Nelnet (NYSE: NNI) in 2018.

I'm now building @duesy to simplify dues and fees in youth sports. Parents are frustrated (I know because I am one) and coaches are spending too much time being bill collectors. I want to get them back to what they love...being the coach.

Learn More: 
https://tonycaudill.com
https://duesy.me

The corner of that whiteboard completely transformed my first company.

How? 

Thanks for asking. 😜 

When we launched our company, our revenue model was 100% saas.

Then we had a potential acquirer share the best nugget of information ever. Their strategy would be to give our software away for free and generate revenue through payments. 

Huh? 🤷‍♂️ 

On the way home from that meeting, we couldn't Google "payment processing revenue share" fast enough. 

We learned a lot in a short amount of time. Mostly the hard way.

When we launched payments on our platform, every week we were hitting a new payment volume record. 

So we made a thing of it. 

When we hit a new record someone on the team would get to write it on the whiteboard. 

Silly? Yep.

Fun Memories? Many.

Our volume records started in the hundreds, grew to thousands, and before we knew it, we were in the millions.

I'd love to tell you we had some master plan for what this meant to our business. We didn't. We were mostly just having fun, learning, and serving our customers.

That payment volume ended up completely transforming our business. We were no longer just a saas company. We were a saas + payments company. 

The revenue from that payment volume ended up being ~40% of our total revenue (and would have gone higher) and was ultimately one of the key reasons we were acquired.

Why do I share this?

Because I know firsthand the unlock payments can be for a vertical saas company. 

I also know first-hand how big of a nightmare they can be if you get it wrong.

I don't own or work for a payment processor/gateway.

I'm just a saas founder who is tired of seeing fellow vertical saas founders/leaders leave revenue on the table and/or be taken advantage of by legacy models.

#saas #payments #fintech #founderstories #revenuegrowth

Tony Caudill

It's go time. ⏰ 

We're officially launching our duesy pilot today and are looking for 3-5 youth sports clubs/teams/facilities to join us.

Maybe you're...

▶ A youth sports club owner tired of chasing dues and fees.

▶ A coach whose go-to payment app has been locked out one too many times.

▶ A youth sports facility owner who wants to make it easier for athletes to join and pay their membership.

Or maybe you know one of these people and would share?

This is a cool opportunity to:

(a) Immediately solve your headaches and grow your organization. 

(b) Help us fine-tune our product and build something that revolutionizes youth sports.

Learn more on our website: just duesy me dot com

Or email me directly: tony at duesy dot me

#youthsports #entrepeneur #fintech #sportstech #startup

It feels like Christmas morning. 🎄 

We're unwrapping the new duesy website. 🎁 

What do you think?

I'd love your input.

just duesy me dot com

#fintech #startup #youthsports #saas

Things I wish I knew as a first-time SaaS + payments founder.

Journal entry 12,956:

It's 2 words...merchant portability.

When you're choosing a payment partner, choose a partner that allows YOU to own your merchant data.

Why is this important?

1. Things Change:

If at some point you need to change payment partners (e.g. you get a better rev share deal, they get acquired, SLA problems, etc.) and you don't own your merchant data, it's very difficult for you to make that change if they own your data. I've yet to see it go well.

2. Acquisition:

Let's say you decide you want to sell your company. If you can tell potential buyers that you own your merchant data and your volume can easily be migrated to a different payment partner, that is a big selling point.

Anyone have any horror stories of trying to convert customers from one payment partner to another? 🙋‍♂️ 

#saas #payments #founderstories #fintech

As a 2X vertical saas + payments founder, I've gone through 4 stages in my payments journey:

1️⃣  Stage 1 - No Payments:

I knew nothing about payments. We were 100% focused on building and growing our saas platform.

2️⃣ Stage 2 - External Payments:

We had a few customers ask if we could "point" to an external page provided by their current payment service provider (PSP). We obliged. We had no relationship with those PSPs. It turns out, we were serving as an onramp, driving net-new payment volume, and not sharing in the revenue. They didn't even send a Christmas card. 😜 

3️⃣ Stage 3 - Integrated Payments:

We learned from a potential acquirer that there is a thing called "revenue share" in the payments world. 😎 

Unfortunately, our integration strategy provided a less-than-stellar customer experience. Our customers had to log in to multiple systems. They were confused on when to come to us for support vs. our PSP. We wasted countless engineering cycles. 

4️⃣ Stage 4 - Embedded Payments (+ banking in the future):

With my new company duesy, our customers can manage all things saas + payments from duesy (1 login). Customers can be live in minutes. The engineering team is spending less time trying to duct tape things together. Oh, and our customers can easily reconcile to the penny. 

Did I have a unique experience or are other saas companies going through similar stages? 

What stage do you find most saas companies today?

#payments #fintech #embeddedpayments #saas #revenuegrowth

Baseball mode activated. ⚾️

It’s going to be a duesy.

#youthsports #entrepeneurlife #founderstories

Back in my Sunday routine.

✅ Concession stand coffee

✅ Running GameChanger 

✅ Perfect Game tournamnet

Wouldn’t trade it. ⚾️

#youthsports #sundayfunday #founderstory

Things I got wrong as a first-time vertical SaaS + payments founder.

Journal entry 9,856:

My Mistake: 
Thinking that adding payments to our SaaS platform was just an engineering exercise.

Reality:
The engineering work is just the beginning. To be successful with payments, you need a cross-functional strategy across:

▶ Product <-- Are payments weaved into the fabric of your saas product or treated as a bolt-on?

▶ Marketing <-- Does your payments pricing work with your saas pricing? 

▶ Sales <-- Can your sales team sell payments without selling payments?

▶ Onboarding <-- Is your saas + payments onboarding experience one and the same or two completely separate experiences?

▶ Support <-- Is your saas support team empowered to support payment questions/issues or do they have to hand the customer off to your PSP?

▶ Success <-- Are you helping your customers use your saas product in ways that drives more payment volume?

Thoughts? What am I missing?

#fintech #founderstories #saas #payments


Problem validation ✅

When you’re building a new company, it’s easy to doubt what you’re doing.

Are we building something people want?

Will our messaging resonate with our buyer?

Are we solving a real problem?

What’s awesome about duesy is that I regularly get messages like this.

If you see an #entrepeneur building something that you think is a good idea, tell them. 

It might be the reminder they need that day.

#youthsports #fintech #founderstory #buildinginpublic

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